Drop the Social Media Cape

Don’t get me wrong here. I love social media, but it is ruining some of us ladies! Me included. It has created the Perfect Girl. This girl simply does not exist, yet we all carry the guilt of not being the Perfect Girl. We work overtime trying to juggle more balls in our lives than one can possibly handle, dropping some of them along the way, while trying to make ourselves look like a Beauty Queen. Then we take pictures of our circus act and post them on social media. Pictures with the appearance of perfection of all the awesome things we are doing, wearing, eating, crafting, etc. so all the world can see our sparkly qualities. Don’t forget the Photoshop and the filters though… We don’t want anyone to see our wrinkles—or our dropped balls.

It’s a prescription for discontent with our lives. It has the possibility to steal our joy. Running continually after a facade of perfection can just flat wear a girl down and out! Recently, I read an article about a young woman who was coming to terms with this. She was probably the extreme, but she had song and danced her world into a crazy emptiness trying to keep up appearances on social media. She was at a crossroads, and ready to live life and be real.

Running continually after a facade of perfection can just flat wear a girl down and out!

What if we get real? What if we show our dirty houses, our piles of unfolded laundry, our dining room table that is no longer a dining room table but a table to house our piles of things we need to “get to?” I actually love it when someone posts a picture on social media without filters, pictures of life in full motion around them. I cheer them on! I think to myself, “Go girl! You are living and loving big!” Not every moment of life is a picture of perfection. Let’s show the real life stuff alongside the sweet mountaintop moments. I also think that if we are real, we encourage and embolden our friends to be able to be real, too. Let’s start a conversation about real life, and how to cheer one another on.

Drop the cape. Live a little more. Love a little deeper. Laugh a little louder, and show me your laugh wrinkles. I’ll show you mine.